Two months ago Oprah Winfrey announced her exit plan from syndication, drastically reshaping the daytime TV business. CBS, which distributes “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and other companies are eager to start new daytime franchises, with an eye toward filling the time slots to be vacated by Ms. Winfrey when she moves to cable next year.

But their partners, local television stations, are suffering. The recession exacerbated the challenges of the local advertising business, making stations less able, or at least less willing, to pay the license fees that companies like CBS have demanded in the past.

To ensure “Swift Justice” would find time slots across the country, CBS agreed to so-called barter arrangements, with the syndicator and stations each selling about half of the advertising time on the show. Well ahead of its fall premiere, “Swift Justice” has already signed up stations covering 90 percent of the country’s TV households.

In formulating the show, “we knew we were going to have a real difficult financial market to deal with,” said John Nogawski, the president of CBS Television Distribution. “We knew only revenue was going to come from a barter arrangement with the station community.”

In syndication, companies like CBS stitch together distribution deals with dozens of stations to achieve nationwide coverage for shows. From these deals, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and, more recently, “Dr. Phil,” “Ellen” and “The Dr. Oz Show” were born.

Prominent shows like “Oprah” and “Ellen” have historically commanded fees on top of an advertising split, with all-barter deals reserved for less prestigious programming. But a sour economy has made barter a more common option — and sometimes, the only option.

Heading into this season, “CBS and all the syndicators realized there was no real potential for significant license fees,” said Bill Carroll, director of programming for Katz Television.

But CBS was determined to start a show regardless. “To lose the opportunity of an entire year going by without a new franchise starting would be, I think, a real loss,” Mr. Nogawski said.

Several other syndicated prospects for the fall have failed to find buyers. Warner Brothers was enthusiastic about a possible show called “MomLogic” (the pilot starred Kate Gosselin from TLC and Paula Deen from the Food Network), but found that it was not financially practical this year, according to executives who requested anonymity because the show was never officially announced.

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Ms. Winfrey’s production company are developing a talk show around the interior designer (and frequent “Oprah” guest) Nate Berkus, but attendees at the National Association of Television Program Executives’ conference this week said that the show had struggled to sign up stations. A Sony spokeswoman said the company still planned to introduce the show this year, but declined to say whether stations had signed on.

For now, “Swift Justice” is essentially alone among first-run daytime shows for the fall. Most of the other deals happening in syndication involve reruns, like Bravo’s “Real Housewives,” which is being sold by NBC Universal to local stations.

CBS already syndicates several court shows, including the format’s most popular one, “Judge Judy,” and Mr. Nogawski said the company was careful not to create a look-alike starring Ms. Grace that would damage its existing shows. In fact, CBS executives try to avoid calling “Swift Justice” a court show at all, although they sometimes slip up.

On “Swift Justice,” “there’s not going to be a robe or a gavel,” Ms. Grace said. But she will resolve conflicts between participants, the same way other TV judges do, and her arbitration decisions will be binding.

Terry Wood, the president of creative affairs and development for CBS Television Distribution, said she would be talking up Ms. Grace’s “sensibility of justice” when she meets with station managers at the conference this week.

“Nancy will really reach the female court viewer — she listens and they believe her. It’s magic,” Ms. Wood said in an interview.

The show is about Ms. Grace, Ms. Wood added, and courtroom justice is the stage for her.

But Ms. Grace already has a daily stage, at CNN’s sister channel HLN, formerly known as Headline News. Her 8 p.m. hour about missing people and criminal investigations is HLN’s most popular program. The CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton was asked about the impact of Ms. Grace in syndication at a town hall for employees in Atlanta this month, which Ms. Grace was coincidentally moderating. Mr. Walton said he thought the daytime show would help HLN by raising Ms. Grace’s profile, according to people in the audience.

Ms. Grace agreed, saying in an interview that “they are so incredibly different, they’re going to complement each other.”

Without a license fee, CBS has to produce “Swift Justice” cheaply. The program will share an executive producer and other staff members with another CBS court show. Ms. Grace will tape episodes in Atlanta, where her HLN show is based, and will sometimes pipe in guests and experts via Skype and via satellite.

Other syndication executives say that waiting a year, until the fall 2011 season, when Ms. Winfrey will depart for her forthcoming cable channel, will help them cut more lucrative deals. Local stations have, to some extent, slowed the revenue losses recently, in part because of an increase in automobile advertising.

But it is hard to predict where the stations will be a year from now, when Ms. Winfrey’s exit is imminent, most likely setting in motion a series of time slot changes for syndicated shows.

“We would have loved to be in business with ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ forever,” Mr. Nogawski said. But her decision now known, executives can prepare for the post-Winfrey era. “It’s going to be good for the business to make us all creative,” he said.

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